Photo: Steve Attwood examines all that’s left of the Ashley Rakahuri River during a drought.
We have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We are going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”
– John Holdren, US Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration
Not a distant problem
We have included climate change as a separate threat. We do so only for clarity, to break down the information into more manageable segments relevant to braided river ecosystems. In reality, climate change is a complex, broad-reaching human-induced threat that multiplies all existing threats while creating new and unexpected ones.
For this reason we have created The Climate Project.
Regardless of what we do to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will continue to change and become more challenging into the indefinite future. The goals now are twofold: reduce the weight of those impacts (mitigation) and find ways to cope with what’s coming (adaptation).
The recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report (October 2018) makes it very clear that if we do not mitigate the impacts, the consequences will be profound, making adaptation extremely difficult and suffering more profound. This is supported by a recent report from the London School of Economics: existing economic risks are vastly underestimated.
For this reason, climate change is often referred to as a ‘risk multiplier’. For example, changing weather patterns are leading to more beech masts, which in turn leads to a population explosion of rats, mice, and stoats.
Climate change also is creating new and unexpected threats. For example, braided river birds like wrybills migrate to the Firth of Thames estuary for winter. That estuary and many others are threatened by rising sea levels. Black-fronted terns also migrate to the coast for winter, flying out to sea to feed on fish, but ocean acidification and changes in oceanic currents already are threatening the oceanic food web. Disease is also a new threat as pathogens once killed by cold weather now spread into new warming areas.
The Climate Project
Have heaps of questions about climate change? Want to know how to mitigate the impacts and adapt to the changes? This new BRaid-led project is designed for everyone.
If you would like to become part of this new project or share your story about what you’re doing, please contact manager@braid.org.nz
There is good news!
Braided river ecosystems evolved to thrive in response to rapid and dynamic change.
Of all the ecosystems in New Zealand, braided rivers are the most inherently capable of resiliency to climate change. But only if we protect and restore them so that they can continue to support our unique birds and wildlife and provide priceless and irreplacable ecosystem services at a time when we most need them.
Impacts
References and research material
- The Climate Resiliency Project: currently underway to help all Cantabrians become climate resilient.
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2022: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (AR6) report now underway; link includes scoping and background materials
- 2019: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019
- Rational and background material relating to the Act (Ministry for the Environment)
- 2019: (London School of Economics); The missing economic risks in assessments of climate change impacts
- 2019: (IPCC) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on the oceans and cryosphere
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2019: Paulik et al (NIWA); Coastal Flooding Exposure Under Future Sea-level Rise for New Zealand
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2019: Paulik et al (NIWA); New Zealand Fluvial and Pluvial Flood Exposure
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2019: Whitelaw; Impacts of climate change on braided rivers (BRaid seminar)
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2019: Hicks (NIWA); Impacts of rising sea-levels on hapua and estuaries (BRaid seminar)
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2019: Deep South National Science Challenges
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Conference: water in our changing climate (Youtube video)
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2018: (IPCC) special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels
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2016: Christie(DOC); What does climate change mean for braided rivers? (BRaid workshop)
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2014: Christie (DOC); Adapting to a changing climate: A proposed framework for the conservation of terrestrial native biodiversity in New Zealand
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2013-2014: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) (synthesis report only).
- 2013: Death, Bowie, and McDonell (eds) (DOC) Freshwater conservation under a changing climate Proceedings of a workshop hosted by the Department of Conservation, 10–11 December 2013, Wellington
- 2011: McGlone and Walker (DOC); Adapting to Climate Change: Potential effects of climate change on New Zealand’s terrestrial biodiversity and policy recommendations for mitigation, adaptation and research
- 2008: Milly et al; Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? Science Vol. 319, Issue 5863, pp. 573-574 DOI: 10.1126/science.1151915